High Tech Crime

Mike wanted to do one last big job and retire in the South, anywhere south , as long as it was out of Oregon. He had done a few small jobs with his partner Paul Stevens and occasional help from Paul's girlfriend, Grace Atloss. The jobs were to rob some place or somebody with a load of cash. Out of seven robberies, three turned up to less than a thousand dollars a piece, two were bungled by bystanders and people just interfering, and in two robberies they just barely made out alive.

Recently, he was catching up on news of high tech robberies. He had learnt that computer dealers and distributors had hundreds of thousands to millions worth of high tech components.

Mike Silverlight, as he was known, was a hard working man. He had learnt that he should do his own homework. So he took turns on staking out a small computer company in downtown Portland. They clearly made records of when UPS and Fedex trucks came by with boxes to be delivered at this company.

ABC Computers, Inc. was an integrator of desktop computers and catered to local corporate accounts. They had a staff of twelve people with one person doing shipping and receiving.

This was a Monday afternoon and Mike knew that UPS truck would come around 10:30 AM with a load of boxes. He and Paul were lingering very close to the back door of ABC Computers. Just after 10:40 the brown UPS truck rolled in. The driver opened the back door of his truck and started pulling boxes out. There were about 34 or 35 boxes.

The driver made about 7 trips to the inside of the door and did not miss four large red boxes that the pair made off with.

Mike said "You know Grace has been giving us strife about wasting our time with this thing. I bet we made a good haul today".

Paul said "Lets take these to that guy at the King of Clubs and see what we got".

The haul turned out to be flat screen Viewsonic Monitors worth about $129 each. Moreover, the guy only offered them $50 each as they were stolen property.

"You say a word to Grace about this and you are a dead man" Mike said.

"Yeah sure, Man! No problem" said Paul soberly. "But what do we do now. I thought there was expensive stuff there".

Mike got a brilliant idea then. He convinced Grace to get a temp job at ABC and learn more about what was what.

So every Monday and Wednesday evening Grace told them what she had learnt lately. They learnt that the most expensive part of a computer was a CPU and a small box could contain more than 50 thousand dollars worth.

Then one day she told them that a box was coming from a Distributor the next day with 40 of the latest Intel CPUs. A plan was made.

It was a Thursday morning, and the UPS truck came to deliver only one box that had come by the next day delivery service. Mike stopped the UPS driver and asked him if he had any change so he could get breakfast. The driver got a bit suspicious as Mike did not look like a stray. Paul came from behind the truck and said, "hand over the box to us buddy, or we will beat you up."

Unfortunately, that was even a worse robbery than the last one, as the box had two bad drives that had come back for replacement.

However, this made Mike more determined to get some CPUs. He still could not come to terms with the fact that CPUs could be worth more in weight then even gold. He found out that next week Grace was going to a technical training at the huge Intel facility and decided that his next target should just be that.

Two weeks later they set up a stake outside the main Intel building. They even got inside with a fake gun and after a total of eight hours of hard work came back with a bunch of promotional gifts and two cups of coffee. However, they did figure out that Intel's high tech warehouse near Phoenix, Arizona was loaded but a very difficult place to get in.

Mike moved to Phoenix with Paul and Grace and started on his next plan. He could not figure out how to get into the warehouse itself, as it was fully robotized and highly secured. But he figured that he should identify the trucks coming out of the place and try to hijack one of those in transit.

Finally, on a late October afternoon, they trailed a truck which for some reason seemed to them like their lucky ticket. The driver stopped at a gas station to get a drink that he was not supposed to. Grace started a conversation with the driver which gave an opportunity for Mike and Paul to jump the distracted driver and hijack the truck.

They dumped the driver about a mile away and left the truck another mile further after moving all the boxes into their own truck.

A day later in Intel's headquarters, RNB in Santa Clara, there was a meeting in the CEO's office.

Paul Smith, CEO said, "Do we have all the serial numbers in".

Jeff Stevens, CTO said, "Yes we do. The program is set. Just hit enter here and all the stolen CPUs will be rendered worthless the first time they connect to the Net".

Sean Meyers, the Top Sales Guy says "Do you think this is wise? We are talking about 18,000 CPUs worth about $18 million US Dollars in retail price. These CPUs will be all over the place after exchanging a number of hands".

Paul sadly agreed and said "Yes it is a loss to us which I am sure Insurance will partially compensate. But look at the bright side, no one will steal or buy stolen CPUs ever again".

Moral of the story is - You may work very hard but crime may still not pay